Scene I. ROMEO If I may trust the illusory truth of sleep, my dreams told me of some joyful news

(Mantua, a street)

(Enter Romeo)

ROMEO If I may trust the illusory truth of sleep, my dreams told me of some joyful news. My heart is very light, and all this day unusually light spirits lift me from the ground with cheerful thoughts. I dreamt my lady came and found me dead (Strange dream that lets a dead man think!) and she breathed such life with kisses in my lips that I revived and was an emperor. Ah me! How sweet is love itself, when its dreams are so rich in joy!

(Enter Romeo's man, Balthasar, booted) News from Verona! How now, Balthasar? Do you bring me letters fromdie friar? How is my lady? Is my father well? How is my Juliet? I askyou that again, for nothing can be ill if she is well.

MAN Then she is well, and nothing can be ill. Her body sleeps in the Capulets' tomb, and her immortal part lives with the angels. I saw her laid low in her family's vault and came away immediately to tell you. Oh, pardon me for bringing you this terrible news, it is only my duty, sir.

ROMEO Is it really so? Then I defy you, stars! You know where I live. Get me ink and paper and hire some horses. I will leave here tonight.

MAN I beg you, sir, have patience. Your looks are pale and wild, and suggest some misadventure.

ROMEO Hush, you are mistaken. Leave me and do the things I told you to do. Have you no letters for me from the friar?

MAN No, my good lord.

ROMEO It doesn't matter. Go and hire those horses. I'll be with you straightaway. (Exit Balthasar)

Well, Juliet, I will lie with you tonight. Let us find the way. Ah mischief, you are quick to enter in the thoughts of desperate men! I remember an apothecary, who lives nearby, and who I recently saw in tattered rags, collecting medicinal herbs. His looks were very meagre, sharp misery had worn him to the bones, and in his needy shop a tortoise hung, a stuffed alligator, and other skins of badly-shaped fish, and about his shelves a beggarly number of empty boxes, green earthen pots, bladders and mouldy seeds. A few rose petals had been scattered to make up the show. Noting this poverty, I said to myself 'If ever a man needed to buy poison, whose sale is punishable by death here in Mantua at present, here lives a miserable wretch who would sell it to him.' Oh, this thought came just before my need, and this needy man shall sell it to me. As I remember this should be the house. Being a holiday, the beggar's shop is shut. What, ho! Apothecary! (Enter Apothecary)

APOTHECARY Who calls so loud?

ROMEO Come here, man, I see that you are poor. Here are forty ducats. Let me have a dose of poison, such fast-working stuff, that will spread itself through all the veins that the life-weary taker may fall dead, and his breath may leave his body, as violently as hasty gunpowder, when fired, hurries from the cannon's womb.

APOTHECARY I have such mortal drugs, but Mantua's law punishes by death anyone who sells them.

ROMEO Do you fear to die, even though you are so bare and wretched? Famine is in your cheeks, need and oppression stand starving in your eyes, contempt and beggary hang upon your back. The world is not your friend, nor the world's law; the world has no law to make you rich; therefore, don't be poor, but break it and take this.

APOTHECARY My poverty but not my will agrees.

ROMEO I pay your poverty and not your will.

APOTHECARY Put this in any liquid and drink it down, and even if you had the strength of twenty men, it would kill you straightaway.

ROMEO There is your gold — worse poison to men's souls, doing more murder in this loathsome world, than these poor compounds that you may not sell. I sell you poison, you have sold me none. Farewell, buy food and get some flesh on your bones. Come cordial, not poison, go with me to Juliet's grave; for there I must use you. (Exit)

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